David Heldebrant
How to Cut Coal Emissions
April / May 2010
Volume 8 Number 2
Ten years ago David Heldebrant created a computer desk with internet access in his college apartment’s guest bathroom. Now, Heldebrant is responsible for creating an ionic solution that could help battle one of the world’s fastest growing problems, carbon dioxide emissions.
At the age of 31, Heldebrant is a senior research scientist for the energy and environment directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Heldebrant and a team of four PNNL researchers are working on a CO2 emissions project using carbon dioxide-binding organic liquids for carbon dioxide capture.
Heldebrant’s research is directed at reducing the carbon footprint, especially on coal-fired emissions from power plants, in order to combat global warming. He believes his research affects the global scientific community because, “the world has very large reserves of coal, but to date there is no clean-coal burning technology.”
To start the process, Heldebrant and his team make a liquid solution of organic bases and alcohols that comprise a non-ionic liquid. The solution, or CO2BOL as the team refers to it, is then injected into the specially engineered system of a coal-fired power plant. While the solution journeys through its given course, it selectively pulls out CO2 that changes the solution to an ionic liquid. Finally, with carefully and systematically added heat and pressure, scientists can extract and concentrate the CO2 for permanent storage.
Heldebrant found that the CO2BOL solution has up to three times the weight capacity as current aqueous amine-based technologies, a lower specific heat, and a higher volumetric capacity, making it much less energy intensive to strip and capture CO2. All of these characteristics make the CO2BOL solution heavily desirable for carbon capture applications.
Born in Pasadena, Calif., in 1979, he was second of two sons. With his father earning a Ph.D. in biochemistry and his brother earning a Ph.D. in pharmacology, he has had a strong support group to steer him toward a scientific career path.
The father of one, soon to be two, said he always knew he would work in the realm of science.
“Science is in my blood,” said Heldebrant. “I used to spend each family dinner learning to dissect my meal.”
He earned his bachelor’s of science degree in fiber and polymer science from the University of California at Davis in 2001 and immediately after earned his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the same institution in 2005.
When asked why he chose to research emissions capture, Dave credited his Ph.D. mentor, Phillip Jessop, a green chemist. Jessop was a professor at UCD until the last two years of Heldebrant’s graduate program when he moved to Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. He chose to spend the last two years of his degree studying at Queens with Jessop. “I fell in love with the idea of green chemistry—trying to do things that are really helping the environment,” he says.
His other scientific hero is Charles Darwin. Although it may sound like a cliché answer, he looks up to Darwin because of his ability to stick to the data, believe in his hypothesis and go through all the proofs until ultimately, people accepted what he had done.
“He proposed one of the most controversial things in all of human kind and had the courage to follow through with it.” says Heldebrant.
The scientist joined PNNL in 2006 as a post doctoral student working in the fundamental and computational sciences directorate and in 2008 was offered a fulltime position as a senior research scientist in the energy and environment directorate where he hoped to develop a new carbon dioxide capturing system that would be more environmentally friendly and less energy taxing.
As a postdoc, he researched hydrogen chemical storage. At the end of his two- and-a-half year postdoc experience, the lab held open calls for CO2 capture project ideas for its new Energy Conversion Initiative.
“I proposed the idea of using reversible ionic liquids for CO2 capture because in the last year of my graduate work I was using reversible ionic liquids for solvent separations and green chemical separations,” says Heldebrant. “I realized, wait a second, these things bind CO2 and have 20 weight percent, which is three times the industry standard. Why not use them for CO2 capture?” That’s where the ball started rolling. He and his team began research using the reversible ionic liquids as a means to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plants.
Over the next year the team will be conducting large-scale experiments using the CO2BOL solution to prove its effectiveness. It hopes to develop the system and commercialize it to benefit the DOE’s carbon capture initiative.
The team also hopes to develop this system to make the first clean-coal solvent system that would bring low-priced coal energy to the general public. Heldebrant says the best aspect about being a scientist is being creative in the work he does and, as a father, getting to leave a lasting legacy behind for his children.
Emily Easley is a communications specialist at PNNL.
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